Having failed to unionize any Wal-Marts, American labor unions have helped form a new and unusual type of workers' association to press Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to improve its wages and working conditions.
With its first beachhead in Central Florida, the two-month-old group is already battling Wal-Mart, the nation's largest corporation, over what it says is the company's practice of reducing the hours that many employees work, often from 40 a week to 34, 30 or even fewer, jeopardizing some workers' health benefits...
The association says it has nearly 200 current and former Wal-Mart workers and is growing by 30 workers a week. Members pay dues of $5 a month. In Florida, its membership includes workers from 30 stores in the Tampa, Orlando and St. Petersburg areas, and it is also seeking to enlist Wal-Mart employees in Texas.
We'll see how far the idea goes, but this seems like it could be the start of something big.
Given the low current rates of private-sector unionization, there are without a doubt a lot of workers with strong pro-labour leanings who lack a natural connection point to the labour movement. It isn't difficult to anticipate a wide variety of service workers being eager to join in an effort which has a plausible chance of improving their lot.
For now, it's very early going. The focus is naturally on the one business with the widest social impact (not to mention the one most noted for labour concerns). And the number of people involved for now is far from imposing.
But the small start should be primarily a way to build the profile of the movement, not a limitation on how far it can go. With a lot of hard work and some good luck, worker's associations could conceivably a labour connector along much the same lines that unions were a few decades ago - but with a less centralized, more diverse structure that's less prone to splits and in-fighting. And that's the type of force that the North American political scene sorely needs.
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